Joannie is starting to move things from Mother’s house. She is very sentimental, so it must be hard.

This week, it was Mother’s “wedding china.” I can’t think why, for the life of me, Mother wanted fine china, crystal, and silver flatware when she was a bride. But she did and somehow managed to get what she considered “a comlete set,” which, to her, meant service for eight.

This is the delicate china.

Somewhat, it survived unshipped through many moves to little towns all across southern Oklahoma as we migrated with Daddy’s oilfield jobs. Ultimately, it came to Pecos, Texas.

It is so unlike anything the mother I knew ever would have chosen: Dainty rosebuds and pink and blue ribbons. But then I have to remember that it was chosen by an eighteen-year-old girl. she always treasured it.

Perhaps there were other occasions, but I can only remember it being used one time. I was about ten years old and an dear army friend of Daddy’s visited us in Ringling, Oklahoma, with his Australian wife, Agnes. Lovely people. Daddy had actually been entertained for meals by Agnes’s parents when they were stationed near Brisbane during “The War.”

I don’t remember the rest of the menu, but for dessert, Mother made an elaborate cake. I recall that it was very labor intensive and looked something like this:

As for the lovely china, no one wants that stuff any more. Even the upscale resale shops won’t take it. ( I actually have sixteen plates and cups and saucers of mine!) Regular people don’t live like that anymore. Actually, they never did.